I didn’t want to blog about the election

Other people have spent plenty of time on it. I don’t have any particular expertise, as I disliked both major presidential candidates and couldn’t be enthusiastic about either winning and didn’t invest much time on the subject prior to the election. But I was predicting (along with the polls, prediction markets and many people who’ve been accurate in the past) that Clinton would win, and I’ve even made multiple bets on the subject. Here is one I made online, which I unsuccessfully attempted to replicate. So I was wrong about this election and his odds in the primary, although I could without any dishonesty excuse some of that by noting that it was very close (Trump seems like he still lost the popular vote) and it could have gone the other way with a slight fluctuation, so one shouldn’t update too drastically either way (Scott Alexander wrote that shortly before the election, further back I was considering linking to this from him on Trump rather than giving my own thoughts). Now that my poor track record of prediction has been established, feel free to discount my further prediction that he will be a run-of-the-mill bad president more along the lines of George W Bush than Nixon (the latter being more interested in governing after a long career of struggle in politics without being able to rely as much on a famous name). This will be exacerbated by unified government, which I had been worried about happening in Dem form. His supporters who had high hopes in him will be disappointed, as Trump himself has less interest in many of their goals than they do, and many will require the cooperation of people who will not be forthcoming with it. Coordination is hard, as Robin Hanson likes to say. That’s enough from me, and I hope to not have to talk about politics for a while.

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One Response to “I didn’t want to blog about the election”

“His supporters who had high hopes in him will be disappointed, as Trump himself has less interest in many of their goals than they do, and many will require the cooperation of people who will not be forthcoming with it. Coordination is hard, as Robin Hanson likes to say”